En som får vedertagna sanningar att explodera« - så beskrivs Noam Chomsky av New York Times. Begreppet »skurkstater« används med förkärlek av USA på stater som Irak, Iran, Libyen och f.d. Jugoslavien, medan Chomsky i sin bok mäter världens supermakter med deras egna måttstockar och visar vilka som verkligen gjort sig förtjänta av att kallas skurkstater.
USA och dess allierade bestås en speciellt noggrann granskning till följd av deras flagranta brott mot just de internationella lagar de säger sig vilja upprätthålla: bombningarna mot Irak; Natos intervention i Kosovo; USA:s stöd för terrorregimen på Östtimor; den politiska krisen i Colombia.
Chomsky granskar också närgånget USA:s inblandning i Mellanöstern, Sydostasien, Karibiska övärlden och Latinamerika för att se vilka effekterna blivit av militär dominans och ekonomisk imperialism. Vidare avslöjar Chomsky USA:s allt öppnare förakt för FN-resolutioner, Deklarationen om mänskliga rättigheter och internationella prejudikat. Hans analys visar att legaliteten har reducerats till ett irritationsmoment för USA som självt kan göra anspråk på titeln »skurkstat«.

Insightful and recommended. If you're new to Chomsky, you learn a lot, but it's a fragmented read. Not one of his greatest, but a valuable and interesting book regardless. ( )

Here is another chronicle of American political actions around the world. The US talks a lot about human rights, and respecting the rule of law. The reality is very different.
One of the reasons for the US embargo on Cuba for the last 40 years is the fear that the “virus” of taking matters into one’s own hands might stimulate the poor and underprivileged to demand opportunities for a decent living. The new leading recipient of US military aid, Colombia, has the worst human rights record in the western hemisphere at the same time that US military aid and training are scheduled to increase. The US instigated a military coup in Guatemala in 1954, because the government’s agrarian reform program, which would aid peasants against the upper classes, had a strong appeal to its neighbors, where similar conditions prevail. Such a thing could not be allowed to happen (the Cuban “virus”). Contempt for the rule of law is deeply rooted in US practice and intellectual culture. When Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, the UN Security Council ordered an immediate withdrawal. The US secretly increased arms shipments to Indonesia; meantime, UN Ambassador Daniel Moynihan rendered the UN “utterly ineffective in whatever measures they took”, beacuse the State Department wanted things to turn out exactly the way they did.
Chomsky also looks at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Kosovo, labor rights, Nicaragua, NAFTA/GATT/WTO, the international debt crisis, and the way all of these subjects have been reported, or not reported, in the US media.
This book deserves a rating higher than Must Read. Chomsky paints a devastating picture of US actions around the world, where the boom is lowered on countries who don’t do things the way the US wants. Highly recommended. ( )

Here Chomsky finds the US and other first-world countries to be rogue states vis-à-vis many places such as Iraq, Kosovo, Colombia, East Timor, Cuba, Guatemala.